Extraordinary the words seem, in the face of Wrangel’s ultimate conclusion about the arme blanche; but the topic breeds paradox. Still stranger is what follows:
“‘To be victorious is the chief thing.’ Under all circumstances this will remain our motto. If we do not succeed with the sword or lance, then let us try firearms. If we are too weak to gain success alone, then let us only be too thankful and accept without scruple the help of our Infantry. Accordingly, on these principles the Japanese Cavalry consistently acted. To reproach them because of this is extremely unjustifiable” (p. 50).
Then, forgetting that he has previously explained the absence of shock in the Russians by the Japanese adoption of fire-tactics, he adds:
“Besides, it must not be forgotten that they (the Japanese), as the weakest force, had the manner of fighting dictated to them by their opponents.”
A whimsical side-light on all of which is thrown by General Sir C. J. Burnett (“British Officers’ Reports,” vol. ii., p. 543), who thinks the “much-maligned” Japanese Cavalry, “with their thorough knowledge of shock-tactics,” must have found it “gall and wormwood to hang on to the skirts of their Infantry,” instead of “riding straight at the opposing Cavalry whenever the opportunity offered.”
Wrangel adds that men on “fast-galloping horses,” and on “not too unfavourable ground,” will be able to enjoy the “irresistible pleasure of charging home with the sword” against dismounted Cavalry. Elsewhere he speaks, in a passage I have quoted before, of the necessity of “eternally galloping.” Our minds go back to the vast destruction of British horseflesh in South Africa, to the wild chimera of the “eternally galloping” horse in any war, to the hard incessant work imposed on scouts and patrols (who have somehow to combine scouting and patrolling with battle duties), and lastly to the charges at the canter made by the ill-fed, undersized Boer ponies. Again, I make no apology for quoting these passages. Wrangel is another of the enfants terribles, like Bernhardi. He betrays his own case, and the more fatally because he does not seem to have studied our war at all; but his case au fond is the same as that of our own Cavalry school.
Among the achievements of the Independent Japanese Cavalry I have mentioned the case of Naganuma’s raid, of Prince Kanin’s important success at Pen-hse-hu, and of the energetic co-operation with the Second and Third Armies at Mukden. In this latter case Wrangel credits them with having pushed forward “in an extraordinarily quick and energetic manner,” driving the Russian Cavalry before them. That the praise is well deserved is shown by the “British Officers’ Reports” (vol. ii.). The Russian Cavalry are estimated at 25,000, the Japanese at 3,240. The latter, both in obtaining information and in action, did extraordinarily well, especially with Nogi’s Third Army. The information is not wholly complete. Exactly how near the Cavalry came to interception does not appear.
Wrangel also gives high praise to the work of the First Cavalry Brigade at the battle of Telissu on June 14–15, 1904. Sir Ian Hamilton (vol. ii., p. 330, etc.) conveys the same impression in regard to the battle, though he, like Kuropatkin, dwells principally on the feebleness of the Russian Cavalry in not using plain opportunities for delaying fire-action against Oku’s turning force. A preliminary combat of advanced guards on May 30 had led to the only recorded case of an arme blanche charge in the war, when two squadrons of Cossacks charged one Japanese squadron and, not having room to gather speed, used their lances as quarter-staves. Would not revolvers have done better? The squadron was defeated, but the “general results of the engagement were indecisive.”[[84]] In the culminating battle of the 15th the Japanese Brigade checked a critical counter-attack by Glasko’s Thirty-fifth Infantry Division, freed the flank of the Third Japanese Division, and took an energetic part in the pursuit of the Russians, driving back the rear-guard by fire.
All critics and historians mention the splendid behaviour of the Second Japanese Cavalry Brigade and of other divisional detachments at the battle of January 26 to 29, 1905, called by the Russians Shen-tan-pu, and by our historians Hei-kou-tai (see “British Officers’ Reports,” vol. ii., pp. 45–58). It was a vehement attack of four divisions against the left of the Japanese entrenched line, held by the Second Army, forty miles south of Mukden. The Japanese Cavalry brigade occupied a cluster of villages near the junction of the Hun and Taitsu Rivers, and in the course of a bitterly contested battle, lasting three days, had to take their share, sometimes with Infantry support, in meeting attacks by greatly superior forces. In this case the work they had to do was precisely the work of Infantry, and our minds go back once more to the directions of our “Cavalry Training”—that Cavalry may be called upon to “occupy localities for defence,” but that their defences are on no account to be otherwise than of the “simplest description,” so as not to weaken the offensive instinct of an essentially offensive arm—in other words, so as not to compromise the steel weapon. This is to organize defeat. If the Japanese had thought so lightly of fire and the concomitants of fire, they would never have had the offensive instinct which they showed at Pen-hse-hu, Telissu, and Mukden.
Everywhere the same moral. In screening, raiding, and battle, fire is master. No observer suggests on any definite occasion any definite opportunity for the use of steel by the Cavalry engaged. Sir Ian Hamilton, the senior of the large staff of British officers who watched the Manchurian War, himself a successful leader in South Africa, has given his opinion officially (“Reports,” vol. ii., p. 526) and in his published diary. He does not miss or evade the point; he grapples with it directly, and is constantly contrasting South African mounted men and methods with Manchurian men and methods, and his conclusion is unreservedly in favour of the rifle. His opinion began to be confirmed at the first battle of the war, the Yalu, where neither Cavalry had any effect on events. His Japanese friends, he tells us, were very much surprised, and naturally, for they held German theories. But “the warmest advocate of shock must allow, when he follows the course of events on this occasion over the actual ground, that there was no place or opportunity where the horse could possibly have been of any value except to bring a rifleman rapidly up to the right spot” (vol. i., p. 137). Throughout the Manchurian campaign “the thought never” but once “occurred to him to long for Cavalry to launch at the enemy during some crisis of the struggle. Neither Infantry has the slightest idea of permitting itself to be hustled by mounted men, and it has been apparent ... that the Cavalry could not influence the fighting one way or another, except by getting off their horses and using their rifles.”